Joe McQuaid's Publisher's Notebook: We thank you all during this transition

If you are a reader of the Union Leader or Sunday News, thank you for your patience, understanding, and kind words for our newspaper carriers over the past few weeks.

If you are one of those carriers, thank you, too.

If you are an advertiser, thank you. And if you work here or for our new printer at the Seacoast Media Group's Dover facility, thank you, too.

Change isn't always easy, and this major change in how our papers are produced has come with its share of late papers, creased papers and even blurry papers. And, yes, some store inserts have skipped some readers.

A lot of people are working hard to minimize and correct the problems. Our printer is bringing in new equipment, and we are finding ways to improve things on our end as well.

I can't begin to list the ways in which our truckers and carriers have hustled to get the paper to subscribers and stores at a reasonable time each morning despite some hellacious late-night press runs.

Subscribers have, by and large, been very understanding. But even the ones who have been a bit, oh, irritable are a reminder to me how much having our newspaper means to so many people across the Granite State.

I want you to know a couple of things.

We made this move out of necessity, not whim. To be commercially viable, our own press would have required a cash investment that was not acceptable. The move was to help ensure our future.

We have made some temporary changes in how we put our editions together in order to minimize delays. The "State Edition'' remains essentially the same; but we are putting our expanded Nashua and Derry-Londonderry coverage into our "Final Edition.''

Incidentally, the funniest thing I heard last week about our sometimes bumpy transition was from the concerned reader who saw the "Final Edition'' type on our front page and called to ask if that was, in fact, our final, very last edition.

Nope. We are celebrating our 150th anniversary as a daily newspaper this year, and we expect to observe the 151st next year. And with the hard work of a lot of good people here and the continued support of readers who appreciate New Hampshire's best newspaper, there will be many more editions thereafter.

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Write to Joe McQuaid at publisher@unionleader.com. Follow him on Twitter at @deucecrew.